Confidence or Hormones?

I am hoping Venus' new found speed is confidence and not caused by hormones. I think Clover is coming in season and Venus might be reacting to that.

Here's some changes Venus and I are working on. I am talking less while running her. In a straight line I am expecting her to take the obstacles in front of her unless I say otherwise.
Only doing crosses when there is a turn. Before I have put crosses where they were convinent for me. Now I am trying to plan them when a turn is the next 1-2 obstacles away. We'll see if we can get adjusted to this and work as a good fast team.

A Whole New Venus!

Ok so I have been taking some lessons with Lynne Stephens and Karen Mielke at Dog Logic. Some of the things we have been doing there have helped Venus with her confidence I think. She is now very hyped up and running fast courses. The downside is that I have to relearn how to handle this dog but it will only be a temporary thing.

I have decided that she might not get her last open leg at the Concord trial because of this. My goal is to have a happy fast but controlled dog. I will require her to keep bars up, hit her contacts, and complete all weave poles. Other than that she might run by a jump or take an off course and we will just keep going. I am going to try to plan to handle her like a fast dog that needs a bit more direction than I usually do with her.
Normally a slight turn of my body will pull Venus with me in a split second but now it is taking more than that.


Concord will be 4 days, July 2-5. Venus is in Ex A JWW and Open Std. We'll see wat happens.

First USDAA trial

So we finally went for it, entered our first USDAA trial. It is 2 months since Venus was last in season which usually means she is hormonal and super velcro dog right now. Because of that I didn't enter pairs (didn't want to cost someone else a Q) and gamblers (no going to upset the velcro dog).

My plan was blown away when I didn't have velco dog and instead I had a kinda distance dog, distance for Venus anyways.

Anyways the outcome for this weekend:
(Saturday)
PI Standard- Q 3rd place
PI Jumpers- Q 2nd place
PI Snooker- NQ (down bar)
Performance Speed Jumping- Qualified for round 2 with a 3rd place

(Sunday)
PI Standard- Q 1st place
PI Jumpers- Q 1st place
PI Snooker- Q 1st place
Performance Spped Jumping round 2- 2nd place!

I'm thrilled with our runs and she had some nice times. Sunday she was less than 5 seconds off the fastest 2 dogs and in standard less than 1 second between her and the fastest dog. Both days she was around 20 seconds under SCT in standard and 9 in Jumpers. Go Bean Go!

Left & Right

We made huge progress on left and right last night.Venus has known left and right spins for a while but I haven't added them onto a course. I have tried in the past working left and right over a jump with maybe 50% sucess. I think she is mostly guessing. I would sit in a chair to give no body cues and send her right or left over the jump.

Last night I tried something different. I sent her jump right. Once she did that correctly she easily repeated. I then stood beside the jump with it to my right. She had to come towards me and the jump but I wanted her to turn right over the jump so she had to turn away from me. That took a while but she eventually would come, jump, spin right.

Next I went pastthe jump about to the middle and called her to come jump and turn right. She picked that up fairly quickly. Again it was a right spin rather than turn but that is fine.

Finally in that same position I gave come jump..... right jump. Tada! You could see the lightbulb come on when she saw the 2nd jump to her right. She finally understood the point of the whole thing. We repeated that several times. Then I gave the command come jump and waited to see if she would take the jump off to the right without the command because of habit. Nope, jumped and straight to me. Yippee!

We repeated all those steps with left and it went much faster. There was a serpentine type set up with a 4th jump out there. I used this to practice left and right. I'd send her over a jump give a left or right so she'd turn that way and take the next jump and I'd give another left or right. She nailed it probably 80% jumping away and towards me.

Off topic but a fun note I showed Flirt this past weekend. She's not finished yet and was in the 12-18 month class. Took Best of Breed both days and picked up a Group 3 & 4! Yay for the puppy!

A Very Long Time

I haven't posted in a long time but haven't really done much either. I will try and go through everything that has gone on.
First up is Bacchus' agility video from Concord, please laugh and enjoy.


In December we had a conformation show. Bacchus picked up the last single point he needed so we are just hunting majors now. Flirt was winners 2 of the 3 days so that was nice. Clover took Best of Breed and got a group 4 on Friday. She was also Best of Opposite on Saturday. Venus was compared against Clover both of those days so that was fun.

We also did a show and go mostly to work on Bacchus' jumping, barking, biting clothing issue. Well of course he did none of that at the show and go. Venus ran well though. People were impressed by the amount of drive my Sams have. Lol!

Venus had a strange lump on her head and we had a big scare that it was a mast cell tumor. She's been seeing a range of vets and as of right now it is nothing, just a hyper reaction to a bite or injury. She's been seen by my regular vet, an internal medicine specialist, a specialized surgeon, and an opthalmologist. We do a punch biopsy this week to be sure it really is nothing.

Jenn came down this weekend and we went to watch all 3 days at the AKC National Agility Championship. Wow what a blast that was. It was great to see Ronda and Pyro do some of their runs. They won the 16" Std class with a beautiful run. They were so close in the challengers round coming in 2nd. It really made me miss competing with Venus. She is going out of season so I can do some trials without worrying about that. There is a trial coming up soon but it is full except for Friday which is Exc only. I might just enter JWW and go play for a few hours that day.
I have some videos to put up late of Venus running with Jenn. Finally got a vid of her dog walk that is so pretty right now!
Brandy

Lots of Updates- Greensboro & Concord

Greensboro-
We only showed Clover on Saturday and she had a very nice Best of Breed win. Sunday we also have Bacchus and Flirt. They were winners dog and winners bitch and both earned a point.

Concord-
What a day Friday was. First we have Open JWW for Venus. She had a beautiful run! 9 seconds under course time, no faults. So she was 3rd place got a Q and earned her OAJ title!!! Whoo!
It is looking like a big conflict between conformation and breed so I move Venus to run first in Open Std. We have an ok run, 1 refusal at the weaves and 1 offcourse since she couldn't resist a dog walk until she was on it lol. Ended up with a Q though and a horrible time of 1 sec under SCT. Something didnt work right with the timers and they asked if I wanted to run again for time. Since I was in a hurry for conformation anyways I said no ad went to go show. Somewhere between Venus' two runs Bacchus attempted his run which consisted of do 2 obstacles and then jump on me.
Bacchus goes in and is Winners Dog but he was the only one. Flirt took Winners Bitch for 1 pt. Then we go in for breed and the judge can't take his eyes off of Bacchus. He ends up giving Bacchus Best of Breed over some very nice specials! Clover took Best of Opposite to him. He also made a cut in a very nice group.
Saturday we only had Flirt in conformation and nothing for her that day. Bacchus put on an entertaining performance in agility again. Venus pooped in the ring in Ex JWW! Our first time ever in Ex and she poops! I was so embarassed. I had just walked her but she was being stupid about the grass being wet. I don't really remember what happened in Std as far as why we didn't Q. It was a fairly nice run and I know there was a refusal at the weaves. I'm pretty sure it was another refusal somewhere.
Sunday we had Bacchus, Clover, and Flirt all in breed again. Flirt lost. :( Bacchus was Winners Dog and Best of Winners for another point. Nothing for Clover. Venus was very very slow on Sunday. I'm not sue what was going on, maybe she was just very tired. She had a pretty run in Ex JWW with 1 refusal on weaves. Other than that a clean run so I am thrilled with that. In Open Std 2 refusals but neither of them on weave poles! She did those right the first time.

Overall a very good 2 weekends. We hae a lesson with Ronda tonight so I might have another update tomorrow. There was someone videoing at the trail so I will post those videos when I get them.

NADAC Trial

This trial was very interesting. Bacchus was wild and crazy and Venus was weird and hormonal.
Nov Weavers-
Bacchus- He was very wild and never did a set of weave poles correctly. He'd do a tunnel and then run around crazy and come back and do the next tunnel. I did tell him sit at one point so I could get him to settle and he actually did sit so that was good.
Venus- She had an idiot owner in this run. I forgot the NADAC rule about no collars so we had to quit the run.

Nov Jumpers (Sat)-
Bacchus- Wild and crazy again but he put a good effort into it. Knocked a bar and came back over a jump the wrong way.
Venus- She knocked a bar so I had her down and we left the run.

Nov Jumpers (Sun)-
Bacchus- He had me very worried about this run. He left the warm up jump when we were working that and went to visit people. He was erxtremely hyped so I had no clue what would happen in the ring. He was on the verge of out of control the whole time but did well. He did a nice call off on a tunnel and was trying to listen. As we got close to the end he leaped on my play growling and being wild. I got him to quit that and we finished up the course. He was entertaining.
Venus- She looked to me like she slipped after a tunnel and couldn't get her fet right to jump so she knocked the bar. I was going to let it go but she was so upset that she totally shut down.

Nov Chances-
Venus- Still upset from the previous run she was off in her own little world here.

Nov Reg 1 & 2-
Regular 1 Venus Qd and got her title! She was doing a little bit better dealing wth the hormones and had a nice run. Regulr 2 I didn't care abut I just wanted her to stay happy. Itwas very messy but she did ok.

Nov Touch N Go-
Another Q for Venus! She seemed much happier during his run.

Tunnelers-
Venus did well but we had a collision with each other and then she missed the last tunnel. I did get her in it but we were over time so no Q. There were a lot of dogs missing that last tunnel.
Bacchus washyped outside the ring watching tunnelers. Once we were in the ring he did good and would wait to find out which tunnel I wanted him in. He's understanding that the point of this game to go do the things I want and I think he likes that fact that there are some tricks out there with offcourse obstacles. He ended up with his first Tunnelers Q.